I do think there is some merit to their argument regarding newbie unfriendliness. There's a large contingent of established editors who are very vigorous about

I do think there is some merit to their argument regarding newbie unfriendliness. There's a large contingent of established editors who are very vigorous about enforcing the notability guidelines. It doesn't help that the guidelines are somewhat broken in some regards, especially for internet content. On the other hand, there is a point at which the low hanging fruit articles have already been written. In areas of science or math, for example, wikipedia's coverage far, far exceeds my own knowledge of the subject. In many cases, I suspect that in many areas there is little besides formatting or editorial fixes that can be added without already having a phd in the subject. And while this is certainly a great thing for the quality and comprehensiveness of the encyclopedia, it doesn't help when you are looking at the number of new pages being written.